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Saturday, July 6, 2013

Blues sign Roy to a 1-year deal

The Blues’ search for a center came to a close on Saturday
evening as the club announced a deal had been agreed upon between them and unrestricted
free agent Derek Roy.

The agreement is in place, pending a physical, but that isn’t
expected to be an issue. The deal is a one-year agreement, worth $4 million. It
will be just the second contract Roy has signed in his nine National Hockey League
seasons.

"(I'm) proud to be part of the St. Louis Blues organization,"
Roy said on his Twitter account. "(I'm) excited to get started."

The Blues were led to look into Roy when they failed to sign
their first two options at center when free agency opened on Friday. The club
had significant interest in both Stephen Weiss and Valtteri Filppula, but both
chose to sign five-year contracts with other pursuers.

Roy, 30, drew interest from other teams as well, but he felt a
one-year deal with the Blues was the right decision for him.

Roy will be the fourth center the club has signed in the
past two days. On Friday, the club inked Alexandre Bolduc and Keith Aucoin to
one-year contracts, while signing Maxim Lapierre to a two-year deal. Both
Bolduc and Aucoin were depth signings while Roy and Lapierre will find spots on
the Blues’ roster.

The Blues’ newest addition has had some explosive seasons in
the past. In the 2007-08 campaign, Roy had 81 points in 78 games with the
Buffalo Sabres, which was his career-best season. Roy split time between the Dallas
Stars and Vancouver Canucks last season after spending the previous seven seasons in
Buffalo.

Roy's numbers have dwindled a bit since he underwent surgery to repair
a torn quad tendon in 2010. The injury and recovery forced Roy to miss 46
regular season games that year. In 2012, Roy had to have surgical work done on
his shoulder as well.

The Ottawa native has 455 points (168 goals, 287 assists) in
591 career NHL games. He also has a plus-43 rating for his career.

Roy, who is 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds, is expected to fill a
role as the Blues’ top center, while David Backes, who has centered the top
line the past few seasons, will likely shift to the wing. Blues head coach Ken
Hitchcock liked that idea last season, but the team’s lack of a fill-in for
Backes meant he couldn’t experiment.

Lapierre will likely be the club’s third line center. Of
course, there is flexibility in that regard as Lapierre would also fit in
nicely with the club’s fourth-line grinders.

In all, the Blues went from having weak depth at the center
position, to solidifying their roster in 24 hours. But those acquisitions have
left the Blues needing to shed some salary.

The Blues have $7.85 million remaining in cap space. General
manager Doug Armstrong has said from the get-go that the Blues likely wouldn’t be
at the cap’s ceiling, which is right around $64 million. The club is still
looking to re-sign forward Chris Stewart, and defenseman AlexPietrangelo. Armstrong has a general idea of how much both
will cost, but the two signings would surely put the Blues over the cap limit.
The team is expected to explore moves that would rid them of some of their
player’s salaries.

Negotiations with Stewart and Pietrangelo have drawn out a bit
longer than the Blues would have liked. It is speculated that Stewart will use
arbitration to his advantage, so his signing may take a bit longer. Pietrangelo
is looking to cash in with a long-term, big-money contract, so the two sides
will likely take some more time to reach a deal.

It is likely that the Blues are done with free agent acquisitions for
now. The club will now shift its focus to signing its restricted free agents,
and shedding salary before the season. The club has plenty of time to do both.